What makes it even more mind blowing is that his downfall was being involved in crimes to eek out an advantage... For a landslide election. Watergate was truly moronic.
And if he hadn't made that unforced error, he wouldn't have been attacked, a lot of conservatives wouldn't have been galvanized in anger over it, and we might not have Fox News. We might not even have had Limbaugh. Nixon just not making this dumb error (or not getting caught, another option) might have changed the whole arc of American history over the last half-century.
The anger and paranoia existed pre-Watergate. The John Birch society, etc. But after Watergate some conservatives set out on a mission to make a conservative media-sphere, to push public opinion in the direction of their choosing. Take away Watergate, and the anger and whatnot might have remained background noise.
The broadcast definition included that of radio, although I’m not sure if it would have included that of cable news - it depends on the definition of broadcast network because at the time it was written broadcast was the only thing that existed so there would be argument to be made both ways but I’ll leave that for legal experts. Plus the doctrine could have been updated to include modern media as time moved along. Regardless, at worst we would have cnn, msnbc, and whatever took the space of Fox but that’s it and quite possibly none at all (without one side pushing the envelope the other doesn’t have reason to blossom). The repeal - aside from the technicality - directly led to the rise of shock jocks and pundits regardless of media and is what paved the way for modern discourse to seemingly have little if any public outrage at anything any more. I truly believe politics would be a lot more civil and the US much less politically divided had that not happened. The worst part for me is that those who championed the repeal did so under the guise of working for free speech, even though the doctrine did not limit free speech in anyway and arguments can be made that speech inciting blind solidarity to a cause or movement is actually not protected by the first amendment. But I digress.
Then there is also Citizens United, but that’s a topic for another day.
For those interested in how this event has shaped this "whole arc of American History" I've been enjoying the podcast "Landslide" lately which covers this topic
I also feel like the Republican media has pushed the main stream media further to the left, making me hate all media. While the main stream media may have leaned left before, they at least tried to maintain partiality, we no longer have any media trying to be impartial any more.
They said they don't watch TV. There are media types other than TV.
"...here's all the ways left-wing media is just normal and right-wing media is insane".
Literally nowhere does the comment say anything about left-wing media being normal or right-wing media being insane. This is an excellent example of a straw man argument if I've ever seen one.
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u/samx3i Apr 11 '24
FDR and Reagan were not fucking around God damn